we are the monsters we kill
by AgentTeddy007
Summary: She hadn't owned a mirror for months and even if she did, she wouldn't have looked into it. She didn't have the courage to see what she had become. Apocalypse AU. Sasuke/Hinata/Sai


_A/N: This story is adopted from kiwiblossom12 she lost the motivation to finish it and I volunteered to take it. So I hope you enjoy it._

**_Disclaimer: Do not own Naruto_**

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_Her mother had once told her that love was the cure to all evils._

_She had been lying of course._

_Love didn't prevent her sister from being kidnapped, love didn't prevent the world from going to hell, and love certainly didn't prevent her mother from bleeding out on the dining room floor as she was beaten mercilessly._

No, _She found hate to be more practical than love._

_And in time she found that she hated many things: Heat. Hunger. Thirst. Dirt. Sweat. Guns. Mutants. Her mother._

_But above all else, she realized she hated what she had been forced to become._

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There were only two seasons in the South: Arctic Nightmare and Hell-fire hot.

Most of their group had traveled down from the North and were used to the never ending bitter winters that would cover the terrain in five feet of ice and snow. They were used to the frostbite and hypothermia and how the cold seeped into the bones and chilled the soul. How the people froze in their sleep, their bodies unable to fight death. They were used to scavenging, starving, and barely surviving. They were used to the never-ending winter and all it horrors.

But they would never get used to the heat.

Dehydration. Burns. Strokes. Confusion. Exhaustion.

Walking for hours as the sun mercilessly beat down on their backs. Trying to run and hide as sweat poured into their eyes, blinding them. Crying and begging for water through cracked lips and parched throats. An inability to sleep at night as the heat suffocated them even in their dreams. And the exhaustion, a weakness of the muscles and the aching in the bones, that killed more in the group than the winter ever did. It was a strange sort of sluggishness that would befall them. A dangerous weariness that promoted complacency and laziness. It lowered aim accuracy, decreased the speediness of travel, and seemingly diminished the will to persevere, to survive.

In the cold they were sharp, alert but in the heat they became sloppy, apathetic.

They could not afford to be lethargic, and yet today was one of those days.

Hinata was lying in the sand, a sniper rifle in both hands, and one eye surveying the land through the scope. Sniping wasn't one of her preferred methods of hunting, but the animals around here were too quick and small for her throwing knives. In the past, she would have normally delegated this job to Takeo, but their one and only sharp shooter had foolishly gotten himself killed two weeks ago and Hinata had turned out to be the most decent replacement.

She hated guns. The way they recoiled, how they weighed you down when you ran, and the loud, attention-grabbing noises they made whenever the trigger was pulled. Knives on the other hand were stealthy, silent, and light. They were superior weapons and she would gladly fight anyone who disagreed. But once again the heat had brought on another bought of lethargy and she found herself briefly acknowledging the convenience of the rifle she currently possessed.

Hinata peered through the scope and spotted the outline of a figure in the distance. It looked like some kind of desert hare. It would be too small to feed everyone in the group, but it was the only sign of life Hinata had seen in the two hours she had been out here. Hinata readjusted herself and waited for it to move within range.

_Okay. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. _

_Fire._

She pulled the trigger and watched as its head exploded.

She stood up and stretched, giving her ears a moment to recover from the painfully loud noise. Then she strapped the rifle to her back and trudged across the sand to her kill.

It was a filthy little thing, with matted grey fur and cracked nails. Light too; all skin and bones and definitely not enough meat too fill everyone's stomachs.

Hinata sighed tiredly as she stashed the hare away in her bag and tied it securely around her waist. She wouldn't be eating for the second night in a row, but she was no stranger to hunger. She would survive.

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She and her group had temporarily settled in one of the smaller deserts the South had to offer.

If the information they had bartered for was accurate, then they were only a couple miles away from a major metropolitan area. Or the remains of it anyway. There they would find shelter, maybe water, and most likely a couple of lonely wanderers who would be willing to trade services and goods. It would be a good area for them to rest after weeks of hard, desert travel. But it would be dangerous. Cities tended to attract all sorts of evil. Thieves and sentinels and mutants congregated in the most trafficked areas all aiming to steel, kill, and destroy. Alone, Hinata would easily be able to outrun, hide, and even kill a few here and there, but with a group of seven, a few sick and weak and one pregnant, evading trouble became exponentially more difficult.

Normally, she would have pushed her group to walk the last couple of miles and then rest once they had reached the city, but it had been an especially brutal last couple of days. The heat had been unbearable, their water level was dangerously low, and exhaustion had spread through the camp quicker than a virus. So she had grudgingly made the decision to stop and set up camp in the middle of nowhere.

Their camp consisted of one battered tent held exclusively for the weak and injured, a couple of worn sleeping bags, and a few bags containing their food and water. It wasn't much by any means, but Hinata had survived on less.

She had reached the camp just as the sun was beginning to set. She had been weighed down by weary legs, so the trip had taken longer than expected.

It was about time for dinner preparation to begin, so Hinata made her way over to where they had started a small fire. She removed the hare from her bag and handed it over to Akemi. Akemi rotated it in her hands, examined its swollen stomach, and poked its protruding ribs.

"It's a little small, but I can combine it with some of our other supplies and it should be fine."

"I'm not going to eat any, so make sure everyone else is full."

Akemi looked up from the animal, a frown on her face and disapproval in her eyes.

"Are you sure? This will be the second night in a row. Hunger makes people sloppy and sloppy people die. Or at least that's what you always say."

" I know, but Miyu's sick, Kiba's half-dead from exhaustion, and Kurenai's heavily pregnant. They need the food more than I do."

Hinata reached for her belt and removed one of her hunting knives. She held it out and Akemi took it.

"Remember not to cut too deep."

"This conversation isn't over you know." Akemi huffed.

Hinata rolled her eyes and Akemi left to skin the rabbit. A frown of displeasure still etched on her face.

"You're not eating again?"

Shino appeared at her side, seemingly materializing out of thin air. Once upon a time it would have frighten her, but she had adapted quickly. Shino was the quiet one, the one who had unintentionally given a heart attack to everyone in the group, and the one who she shamelessly sent to scout every single time. He was great at stealth, but was never able to turn it off. Sometimes she found herself wondering if he actually could teleport. But then the thought would quickly be banished from her mind. If he was a mutant, she would have known already.

" No."

"Ok."

That was another good thing about him. His ability to keep his mouth shut and not disagree with her decisions. If everyone in the camp did what he did, then a couple more people might still be alive. It was not a conceited statement, it was the honest truth. She hadn't survived this long due to sheer dumb luck. She was still living because she always made the right decisions that kept herself alive.

Shino shuffled his feet and readjusted his glasses.

"Well are you still up for playing tonight."

Hinata smiled.

"What makes you think I'm not?"

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Every night she and Shino liked to play a game.

He would stand a certain distance away from Hinata, holding a board with a bulls-eye painted on. She would then aim a knife at it and throw it. If she hit center, Shino would answer a question about his past, and if she missed she would tell him something about her's.

But Hinata never missed.

So, she took this time to ask him nonsensical and arbitrary questions. It wasn't really about delving into his past life for juicy or shameful secrets. It was more about delving into his past for fond memories that she had never had. It was their time to escape from the present. To forget about how awful everything had truly become.

" You never finished the cake story from yesterday."

"I didn't? oh, well there wasn't too much to it I guess. It was my eighth birthday and my father dropped the cake on the ground. I might have cried, but I don't remember."

Hinata laughed as he turned around and walked away from her. He was about 15 feet farther than the last time. He held the mark in front of his chest and Hinata fired.

_Bulls-eye_

He walked back and Hinata removed the knife from the board, confirming that it had hit the center.

"I'm kind of at a loss right now." She smiled cheekily. "I'm racking my brain trying to find a question but nothing is coming to me."

"Well I do have some interesting..."

He was cut off by a roar of thunder and a streak of lightning illuminating the sky.

They both turned in the direction of the lightning and Hinata frowned in confusion. There was never lightning or thunder in the South. Thunder signified heavy rain, but it never even rained in the south. Never even drizzled. Which meant...Which meant...

Hinata's eyes widened in horror.

"We need to leave now!"

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Hinata had a horrible feeling in her gut.

It was the sickening feeling she got when she was about to make the wrong decision, the decision that could end her life. She knew it was wrong to lead them to the city, that they would have probably been safer still out in the desert. But she wanted, no, needed to find the source of the lightning.

They had just reached the city sometime during the night, a trip that would have normally taken them two hours was completed in under one. Unfortunately, the speed came at a price. Even though it was night, the heat was still prevalent and all of them were folding under its pressure. Hinata was fairing no better than the rest of the group, but she needed to put on a brave front.

Hinata had sent Shino ten minutes ahead of the group to scout out a safe space to sleep and luckily he had found one.

The reached their destination and she quickly ushered the group into a bombed-out sporting good store.

"There's a room in the back. It doesn't have a lock but we can barricade it with a shelf."

Hinata gave Shino her thanks as she helped transport their supplies into the room. It was small with no windows or back door. It would be a cramped, tight-fit, but at least they would be relatively safe for the night. After seeing that everyone had made it into the room, Hinata attached a pair of her knives to her belt and strapped the sniper rifle to her back.

"Where do you think your headed?."

It was Akemi. Arms crossed at her chest, disapproving scowl at the ready, and blocking the doorway preventing Hinata from leaving.

It was silly really.

Akemi thought she could dictate Hinata's actions because she was older than her. She tried to be the kind, nurturing mother of the group who healed the injured and cured the sick. It was nice at first, but then she decided try her hand at ordering Hinata around. It stopped being cute and Hinata found herself annoyed and infuriated.

"I'm going to see about the lightning strikes. Do not try to stop me."

Hinata hardened her voice and leveled a glare at Akemi. She would normally try to be diplomatic, reason with her about why her decisions were always the right ones. But today was not one of those days. If this lightning strike was what she believed it to be. Then she didn't have any time to play nice.

Hinata walked toward the door and when Akemi refused to budge she shoved her out of the way, years of hunting had made her much stronger than a woman who had spent most of her life in a protection camp. She could hear Akemi indignant screeching as she ran out of the sport's store, but Hinata knew that she wouldn't dare follow her. The room was safe and she was too scared to leave it.

Hinata had only been searching for ten minutes before a bolt of lightning struck the building next to her.

She dropped to the ground, knife in hand, frantically searching her surroundings for...there!

About five buildings in front of here was a gang of bandits. She could barely see from this distance and the only light seemed to emit from inside the circle the gang had formed. Hinata needed to get closer, needed to be up higher. She picked herself up off the ground and slowly crouched over to the alleyway between two buildings. One of them was equipped with a fire escape, so Hinata pulled herself up and climbed the ladder to the roof of the building.

She unstrapped the rifle and laid prostrate on the ground, finger on the trigger, eye looking through the scope.

Her suspicions had been correct. It was a person controlling the lightning. Hinata tried to focus the scope to get a better view of the figure and when the next flash of lightning came down, illuminating the surrounding area, her heart stopped. She didn't care that some boy was controlling acts of nature. Or that every time lightning came down it struck a bandit causing it to explode. No, what made her heart stop and her breath quicken were the numbers spread across his shirt.

_22345_

_Almost exactly like his._

Hinata gritted her teeth and waited. That feeling in her gut had returned and she knew what she needed to do. There were still eight bandit surrounding him, all armed with various weapons. She knew she wouldn't be able to take them all, so she waited for the mutant to take care of them himself. Lightning struck down again.

_8 bandits_

_7_

_4_

_3_

_1_

_0_

Hinata readjusted herself and felt her hands shake.

_Okay. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in._

_Fire._

She pulled the trigger and watched his blood splatter across the ground.

_Bulls eye._


End file.
